Dissertation results!

[Steve Thurston]

Hi there!

And thanks to all who completed the on-line questionnaire!

Unfortunately I did not get a chance to do anything on activity markers in my dissertation but I will hopefully be writing something on activity markers in the next couple of months.

What I did do in my diss was produce a model for sharp-force trauma based on long sword techniques in Ringeck, Liectenauer, Vadi, Codex Wallerstein and Talhoffer 1467.

The method of footwork I used in the interpretation of these was a method similar to that taught to me by Oz based on Silver.

The best way I can describe the footwork is to give an example (Its not mentioned in any of the text explicitly but it may be well known to experienced WMAs)

Starting in Vom Tag (Ringecks) on the right side with the left foot forward. As the opponent starts his attack place the left foot infront of the right, toes pointing towards the opponent. Then conduct the attack as normal and this brings you to the opponents side and allows attacks to the rear.

In my interpretation this can be used in most, if not all, attacks as well as a decent number of counter-attacks.

I used this to analyse the manuals statistically cataloging the different blows in the manuals covered as attacks to the Head (& neck), upper quarter, radius, ulna and lower quarter. The head was then subdivided into the anterior (front), lateral (sides) and posterior (back), the only manual I could do this for was Ringeck (Tobler pics made it easier as well!).

When I had done this I worked out the average and used this as the predictive model which was then compared to archaeological data. The most common attack in the manual were to the back of the head on the left side.

St Andrews Cemetary, York.
I couldn't do a full comparison as the texts on the cemetary didn't give enough detail, however the later period, 1150-1500AD displayed a pretty good match with the model. The earlier stuff displayed a similarity as many of the attacks went to the rear but the focus in this period was the upper quarter not the head.

Towton
The details in Blood Red Roses were good enough to do a full statistical analysis and direct comparison to my model, so I did!

This showed a really good match, less than 10% variation from my model. Not bad considering the stuff in the manuals is theory compared to the real fighting of the battlefield.

I've also developed some tradition markers as well.

Horizontal blows to the face or forehead caused by 'crooked cuts' or 'cross strikes' among others. There were a good half dozen of these at Towton.

I also suggested that multiple superficial wounds to the lateral aspects of the head were potential indicators, espeacially if there was a substantial wound to the back of the head. Yet again Towton has about a half dozen of these.

Anyway this showed that many of those at Towton were trained with, what I have termed, the Higher Medieval Martial Arts Tradition. (I have noticed that some are not happy with the use of the term tradition, however, during the period it was a tradition hence its use in the study) and that the majority were familiar with the basic principles, if not the "secrets" depicted in the manuals.

I also did some research into military frameworks for the Higher Medieval period(1380-1600AD), this was pretty hard, nobody's done too much research in this area so I had to start with the feudal system and develop the idea with reference to the changing social structure based in the towns.

I did finaly create a model for the higher framework and came up 8.37% of the 500,000 men of fighting age being trained with the explicit techniqes depicted in the manuals, c.40,000 men in England alone, western Europe followed a more feudal structure for a lot longer that England so I would surmise that fewer people were trained, although the armies themselves would be bigger than the English forces.

I'm not sure what you'll all think of this as my interpretation seems somewhat different from many of the published works such as Tobler but I should be getting it published in an acraelogical journal according to my supervisor.

Again thanks to all those who helped with the online questionnaire, it was much appreciated

Steve

[Arthur D Colver]

Battle is not a one-on-one affair as most of our sparring and/or training seems to be. In battle a number of wounds are going to caused by "blind side" attacks coming from other enemies in the melee while the individual was "occupied" with the oppponent to his front.
How do you account for wounds inflicted by other than the attacker to the victim's front?

[Steve Thurston]

The method of footwork means the attacker is stood to the side by the time the blow connects, which when compared to a lot of the cranium injuries, from Towton, fits. Many of the wounds are to the left side (to be expected as 95% of the population are right handed), and the injuries are '"deeper" as it were on that side.ie they cut deep into the parietals or temporal on the left side but only into the occipital or silghtly into the paraetals on the right. This is reversed when the attack is from the right.

With regards to battle field fighting allowing people to come up behind you - they would have had to have fought through half your army to get up behind while you fight the opponent directly infront, or at least put themselves through worse risk by truning their backs on a multitude of enemies.

Steve

[Ryan Ricks]

what sort of statistical tests were you using?

[Casper Bradak]

You have to take into account that it's likely the majority of blindside wounds from a formation would likely be puncture wounds, the majority of which won't show up in the skeletons.

[Steve Thurston]

I started nice and simple, thrusts are different from blade edge attacks and to me these were the two most basic catagories. I did not make much reference to thrust as they don't leave a lot of evidence in the archaeological record.

So blade edge attacks were the divided into true edge 'cuts', true edge 'strikes', false edge 'cuts' and false edge 'strikes'. A 'cut' simply uses the elbows and wrists while a 'strike' includes the torque of the hips and the shoulders. (As yet there has been little scientific experimentation into the effects of different types of cuts or strikes so I couldn't use this for archaeological comparison but it was usefull to note trends in the use of the blade edge. Talhoffer was an out lier with true edge attacks as was wallenstein with false edge cuts but everything else follows a pretty similar pattern.

In my diss I just use a single catagory of blade edge cuts, I'm going to look for funding to do some proper test-cutting experiments for post-grad stuff next year.

This was then split into attack to the right or to the left side of the vistim which was in turn divided into attacks from above horizontal, below horizontal and horizontal. This was the direction of the attack in the moments before impact and not from the start of the move to allow for feints etc.

After this I split into the head, upper quarter, radius, ulna and lower quarter, the head then split front, side and back.

I used this to produce a flow chart with tick boxes.
I then sat down with the manuals and worked through the long sword section in them using the boxes to tally up the number of hits to each area. I then work out each of these as a percentage of each manual, this meant it was possible to compare manuals with each other.

The final predictive model was simply an average of the manuals.

Crude but it did the job! there was a pretty strong correlation between the manuals I looked at, there was usually a bit of variation between them and occasional there would be an outlier. I felt this was to be expected as personal interpretations of the same method, like the oriental 'schools'.

An intersting point is that Vadi has more in common with Liechtenaur and Ringeck than Talhoffer or Wallenstein the latter two always being the outlier if one was present.

Steve

[Steve Thurston]

Looking at the pictures and the correlation between the model and Towton I don't think pre-renaissance battlefield combat was fought in too much formation.

Like the archaeological theory that formalised fighting cannot leave wounds to anywhere other than lateral aspects of the skelton is based on better documented, post-renaissance techniques, more like our own, and that as yet no research has been done to support or contradict the theory, except my dissertation hopefully (it certainly has got my supervisor quite excited).

Steve

[Casper Bradak]

Speaking as an infantryman and from my own research I'd have to say that only in the worst of situations was there not an attempt at some formation. To lose formation in real combat spells disaster for anyone who can take advantage of it and goes against common sense.

[Steve Thurston]

Pictures in the Schilling chronicles show two types of fighting.

Raids on towns where individuals simply run around chasing 'civilians'. No formation at all and I reckon was probably like a lot of early medieval fighting, you need a good infra structure to start spying and finding out other nations are gathering forces so many invasions, after the Romans left, would be suprise attacks with little chance to prepare.

In the battlefield situation the soldiers in the Schilling chronicals are organised into groups of c.10 men sometimes smaller (its been a long time since I've seen the pics some I can't be precise on the number of men, but not lots!) These are essentially just huddles of men, no rank, no line and there can be quite big gaps between the groups.

Also looking at the manuals from the period all methods of combat need a certain amount of room, perhaps the only difference would be a spear in the hands of levied foot men. As you have a blade edge on most pole-arms you can presume you were expected to 'hack' at the opposition to some extent.

As Talhoffer, amongst others, were master-at-arms for military active lords then it would appear odd that the fighting they depict not be suitable for most battlefield situations.

Did medieval armies have an effective enough officer core to maintain any sort of formation once in combat?

The English won the Napolionic battles as they stood in lines that did not break, supposedly firing three rounds a minute. The French on ther other hand just kept walking troops out untill they turned and ran. Military theory takes a long time to change, no matter how much external pressure.

What evidence for close-formation fighting we do have stands out as examples of good theory in brief periods of history. The Norman Shield wall was not used before or after the Normans (except in princple by the Romans), and the Swiss are known to have introduced the concept of strick formation pike blocks that developed into the modern way of war.

Higher Medieval armies from England also use large amounts of archers, who need considerable space, even more if stood between pointed stakes. Looking at the number of men-at-arms, 4,000, in comparison to the 24,000 archers I would suggest that the archers may also have to function as normal foot soldiers in close quarter combat, many are depicted with swords as the only side arm.

These troops aren't in close formation to start with and will be loosing arrows till the last moment, well about 40yrds distance, before drawing swords, this would certainly enable the use of methods encorporating the wider stepping footwork.

I don't propose that there was no attempt at formation, but that the formations were different from those with which we are familiar, it is amazing how much common sense is based on tried and test theory.

"Speaking as an infantryman" modern or re-enactor?

Steve

[Casper Bradak]

It's a common bias. So many old fashioned historians are comvinced people got dumb after the fall of rome and got them some learnin when the renaissance suddenly happened.
There's no one answer to any of your statements, it all depends. Some were better at it than others. And except for the nobles and proffessional warriors, the feudal system was like the reserves. Naturally they generally won't be as disciplined as a standing army, but in combat, soldiers rely on their buddies to keep them alive. It's like reaching for a life raft when you're drowning. At the very minimum keeping a line is the way it worked back then. It was spoken of often enough in my readings. Most of what I know of small unit tactics back then is from journals and such, but I do know there's plenty of surviving dcumentation on proper logistics and large unit formation and tactics.

[TimSheetz]

At the first Battle of Pontiers the European's formation defeated the mounted invaders. No horse will charge into a mass of spears.

That was in the 8th or 9th century I believe.

[Steve Thurston]

I would have to say that to some extent after the Roman departure England did get dump. They stooped using water wheels, the stopped producing wheel thrown pottery, they stop using down draught kilns, aleast until the 8th century. The houses weren't was well built, they didn't build roads or aquaducts, the cloth was of a poorer qualitity, the farms were less productive and the trades routes were not as extensive or as well travelled. Not forgetting that sub-roman british reverted to an oral culture.

However, I never said they were dumd, just different! They may have had tactics that were more suited to their particular methods of martial arts that use wider stepping motions than post-renaissance arts.

WWI is a good example that standing in lines facing each other is not always a good way to fight. You need to rely on your mates but that doesn't imply lines of formation

"At the very minimum keeping a line" it depends on what you call a line, one man every couple of meters would produce a line in which wide moving combat techniques would be more than effective, but would not lead to point injuries to the lateral aspects as you get in modern re-enactment.

This type of formation would also be the type of stuff you would expect to see with archers stood amongst shapred stakes.

I know some sources that state arriving in lines but I can't think of any specific examples of regimented line fighting other than that associated with the Swiss etc. In pics the easiest way draw lots of people is to put them in regimented lines, in fact trying to do detailed painting of big groups of people without them being in formed ranks can be pretty difficult.

As my model correlates so strongly with Towton I can't see how rigemented lines would cause this damage, only 4 of the 50 indivduals display no form of trauma, c. 75% have sharp force injuries, the remainder were either blunt force trauma or projectile injuries.

There were some cases of potntial stabb wounds. Two individuals have repeated wound to the back of the neck associated with dagger stabs and one individual has a stab wound to the inferior aspect of the clavical which is quite probably from something out of the manuals.

If the 4 guys with no skeletal trauma were killed by thrusting wounds then they are the only guys who did. All the other fatalities seems to be blade edge wounds with more than 1/2 possibly being killed by blade edge attacks to the back of the head.

A couple of guys also show evidence of blunt force trauma to the side of the face some of which I reckon might be pommeling as they also have blade-edge trama as well.

Steve

[Steve Thurston]

No horse will charge into a mass of spears.

If spears are so successful against chavalry charges why do they majority of European nations continue to use them extensively untill the 16th century.

Also appears that what gave the English the advantage during the 15th century was the longbow as a means of stopping Chavalry charges.

England also stop the use of spearmen, so wether or not it would be best seems not to be the point, they did what they were familiar with or what worked for them.

Steve

[Casper Bradak]

A few points. I didn't mean to imply you said they were dumb. They didn't employ cavalry by charging them into spears. Fighting in a line formation is a heck of a lot different when you bring firearms into play as opposed to hand weapons, and the formations shouldn't be compared.

[Ryan Ricks]

i remember some strategies from my studies.

armies would use artillery and cavalry to manipulate their enemie's battle formation.

first, (A)lice's army would be in some kind of formation. (B)ob's army would then use its artillery to try and disperse Alice's troops. Once Alice's troops were dispersed, they would be vulnerable to a cavalry charge. Fearing a cavalry charge, Alice's troops would come back into formation. Therefore, if Bob's artillery doesn't get you, his cavalry will.

whether archers and medieval cavalry is applied in a similar manner, i don't know. These tactices were from the napoleonic era, i believe. It does seem logical, however that archers and medieval cavalry could be used in the same way.

ryan